How to Rank #1 in ChatGPT Results (AI SEO Strategy)

This is a can’t-miss episode. Today we are breaking down the AI search engine optimization playbook — everything you need to do to get visibility, awareness, and traffic from services like ChatGPT. We’ve got an amazing SEO expert, Aja joining us today, and we’re going to break down the playbook. We’ve got some amazing data to share with you all, and we’re going to give you the step-by-step approach at the very end. So you want to watch this whole show. Let’s get to today’s episode.

Okay. So you are busy doing SEO — it’s where I started my career. It’s where Kip and Aja have spent a lot of time. We used to get a ton of traffic from Google Search, the blue links, and all of that traffic is disappearing into the AI ether. It is disappearing into AI search.

And what we’re going to go through today is how to do AI search optimization. That really is the new thing you have to focus on if you want to get visibility for your brand. But the thing is, it’s so new, it’s really hard to understand: what is the playbook? What should I do? How do I make sure my brand, my product appears in AI search?

We’re here to give you the full playbook for AI search optimization. We are lucky to be joined by Aja Frost, who works at HubSpot — one of the best minds on this topic. Aja, welcome to the show.

I wanted to kick off with this. I was actually looking at the growth in AI companies in general — just how quickly they are growing revenue — and I thought this was a pretty amazing chart to help people understand what’s happening. Because for the average business, I hear two types of stories.

I hear, “Wow, this is really starting to impact us. We don’t know what we should do. We have a decline in organic search traffic. What do I do? Do I do SEO? Do I optimize for Google AI Overviews? Do I optimize for LLMs?”

And then I hear, “No, I don’t believe this. This is going to take forever to actually impact us. It’s going to happen over a very long period of time.”

And what this chart shows is the time to reach one billion users. ChatGPT took two and a half years. Google took 13 years. So ChatGPT did it 10 years earlier. This tells us that users are voting with their thumbs and fingers and typing all of their deepest, darkest thoughts into ChatGPT instead of Google.

Yeah, I think that’s right. The more I talk to our customers — and honestly, the more I just eavesdrop on people — I hear them say, “I’m going to ChatGPT.” And my next question is always, “How much are you using Google?” And they pause and say, “A lot less.”

Another thing that really caught my attention is the estimated LLM versus organic search value. If you pull this chart back to 2023, we were already talking about how this would disrupt Google because it’s a better experience. And what’s wild is how quickly traditional search has been unbundled into AI chat experiences.

The other really interesting thing is that the total LLM value is more than just the traffic attributed to LLMs. Someone coming from an LLM is worth more than someone coming from traditional search.

Why? Because people are completing their entire buyer journey inside AI search. They’re going from “I have a problem” to “this is the solution” incredibly fast. And because people feel LLMs are objective and unbiased, they trust those answers more than traditional search results.

I think that’s right. And if you’re watching this show, you probably get what’s happening — but you’re working with people who don’t yet. The simplest explanation I give is this: Google’s 10 blue links were an answer engine. You created content, answered questions, and got traffic.

LLMs are action engines. People can buy, research, and take next steps directly inside the experience. That’s more valuable, but it requires a totally different approach.

The thing we really need to talk about is that the LLM visitor is worth way more than a traditional search visitor. Aja, you’ve spent a lot of time digging into this. Can you break it down for us?

One of our early hypotheses was that we’d get less traffic from LLMs, but that traffic would be worth more. SEMrush says it’s worth more than 4x. What does that actually mean?

Sure. Traditionally, when someone came from organic search, they could be at any stage of the buyer journey. Maybe they were just learning what content marketing is. They’d read a blog post, download a guide, and over weeks or months — sometimes years — eventually decide to talk to sales.

That entire journey took a long time, and we nurtured them along the way.

Now someone goes to ChatGPT and says, “Tell me everything I need to know about content marketing.” And ChatGPT does that in a highly personalized way. They reach clarity faster. They learn about solutions faster.

By the time they come to HubSpot’s website, all that nurturing has already happened. They want to talk to sales immediately.

We see this in our Gong calls all the time. Over and over, people say, “ChatGPT said you were the best, so I came to you.” Or, “ChatGPT told me HubSpot is the CRM I should use.”

Historically, about 80% of the B2B buyer journey started with Google. That’s expected to move to 95% starting with LLMs. But it’s not just that they start there — they often never leave. Everything happens inside the LLM.

That makes it harder to reach consumers, but it also means when you do reach them, they’re much more qualified.

Another challenge is what LLMs actually cite. They don’t usually cite vendor websites. They cite third-party aggregators.

Jason Tublin analyzed this and found brand websites were cited only 9% of the time. That’s wild.

Aja, does that align with what you’ve seen?

Yes. What we don’t yet know is whether LLMs prefer third-party sites because they’re less biased, or because their content is more ingestible. But many AI search best practices mirror what those third-party sites already do well.

That means vendors who adopt these practices can become much more visible.

If you’re enjoying this conversation, we’ve built an AI Search Domination Kit that includes checklists, prompts, and tracking frameworks to help you show up in ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity. You can grab it at the link below.

Before we get into the “how,” we need context.

Google has been on a decade-long mission to personalize search. ChatGPT with memory finally delivered that experience.

Google has also faced lawsuits from publishers over traffic and monetization. OpenAI has clearly learned from that and is trying to avoid similar issues by choosing safer partners.

So two forces matter: search is now deeply personal, and LLMs favor lower-risk content partners.

We see that clearly in the data. Reddit and Quora show up constantly because they’re user-generated and considered lower risk.

So here’s the big question: can you win AI search without a Reddit strategy?

You can still optimize for blue links, for AI Overviews, and for LLMs. But if AI Overviews show up, the number one blue link can lose over 30% of traffic.

So what should people actually do?

I get the nostalgia for blue links. SEO got predictable. It got boring. And now we’re back in an era of experimentation. No one has an edge yet. The edge goes to the fastest learners.

If you’re starting from scratch, I’d go all-in on LLMs. If you have existing SEO traffic, protect it while building AI search systems in parallel.

And here’s the key point: AI SEO does not hurt traditional SEO. These aren’t mutually exclusive.

Now for my controversial take: visits matter less than ever.

Historically, visits correlated directly to revenue. Now, most of the journey happens before the visit. What matters is that final, high-intent visit.

So HubSpot is shifting toward measuring visibility in LLMs — share of voice, impressions, recommendations.

We use tools like XFunnel to track that. No tool is perfect yet, but they help define where you’re winning.

One of the most important mindset shifts is this: specificity beats quality alone.

People aren’t asking “what is the best CRM.” They’re asking, “What’s the best CRM for a manufacturing company in New Jersey with plateaued growth?”

That means you need hundreds of ultra-specific pages — and you need AI to produce them.

Original data is critical. Use your own customer data. Bring real proof into your content.

We’re also flipping the funnel. Start with bottom-of-funnel content. AI search rewards buying-context content far more than generic education.

Citations matter. LLMs often cite sites outside Google’s top 20. They care less about authority and more about relevance and specificity.

This creates a massive opportunity. You can launch a focused site and get AI visibility in days instead of months.

For off-page strategy, backlinks matter less. Mentions matter more. You want repeated co-citations tying your brand to your category.

So what should people do next?

Know your personas.
Build AI-powered content systems.
Use original customer data.
Measure visibility, not just traffic.
Prepare for a fundamentally different marketing world.

I’m incredibly optimistic for curious people. The biggest challenge is attribution, but the opportunity is massive.

We’ll do follow-up episodes on this. Aja, thank you so much for joining us today.

We’ll see you next time on Marketing Against the Grain.

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